Category: The Beginning

Posted in Memoir, The Beginning, Writing Goals, Writing Projects

Matilda Butler’s Interview with Me

Posted on by beckylevine

Matilda Butler is a teacher (and student!) of memoir. She’s the co-publisher of Rosie’s Daughters, a collection of memoir pieces by women born during WWII. She has as many shelves of women’s memoirs in her library as I do children’s books–maybe more! I first met Matilda at the last East of Eden writers conference, and–when I was developing the memoir chapter in The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, I asked her if I could pick her brain about things writers should be thinking about. She was kind, generous, and incredibly helpful. And she asked me if I’d do an interview with her for her Memoir Moments at http://womensmemoirs.com.

Matilda just put up the interview, so if you’d like to take a listen (Yes, it’s in AUDIO!), hop over to the post here.

Posted in The Beginning, The End, The Middle

Beginnings, Middles, & Ends–What Goes Where?

Posted on by beckylevine

Friday, I had a pretty productive day. I sat down and did some thinking about some new scenes in my WIP, and I ended up with a basic plot arc–styled after Martha Alderson’s Plot Planner in Blockbuster Plots-Pure and Simple. I took a photo and posted it on my other blog, if you want to check it out.

As I worked on the plot arc, though, I could see all these threads that I don’t have woven in yet. This is fine, obviously, since I’m just getting started. Still, too many loose story threads, just like too many loose threads on my clothes, can drive me a bit nuts until I get them a little more tucked away.

So this morning I’ve been browsing through some writing books–reading up on beginnings, middles, and ends–and trying for an early placement of some of these threads. This seems to help me look at the rising (hopefully!) tension of the plot, to think about where the big things should happen and how I can build to those spots. For me, it’s mostly about what happens:

  1. Before the hero’s first threshold–that inciting incident that is a microcosm of the whole, big story problem.
  2. After the hero’s death (symbolic or otherwise)–when they face their worst crisis and make their most important (and hardest) choice.
  3. Everything in between.

Here are a few things I came up with, in general terms, for what we should be doing in each of those sections.

Beginnings

  • Introduce the compelling hero
  • Establish the hero’s story goal/problem
  • Create a push/pull tension for hero around that problem
  • Establish the primary/most threatening antagonist
  • Establish the story world
  • Disturb that story world (seriously disturb it!)

Middles

  • Strengthen hero’s goal & opposition to that goal
  • Amp up the stakes for hero
  • Amp up the stakes for the antagonist
  • Strengthen and complicate character relationships
  • Throw in some new, surprising information (Thanks to Jordan E. Rosenfeld, in Make a Scene, for this one.)
  • Establish a sense of death hanging over the story world (And thanks to James Scott Bell, in Plot & Structure, for this one.)
  • Set up hero to make big choice, while making it “impossible” for hero to make that choice
  • Seed and (later) reveal secrets.

Endings

  • Resolve all story threads
  • Test, one more time, hero’s big choice
  • Show the impact of that choice choice–on hero and the whole story world

What about you. When you plot, do you just work through scenes in the order they play out? Or do you, like me, try to position them in one of the main sections of the story arc? And, please, freel free to tell me anything I’ve missed! 🙂

Posted in Revising, The Beginning, Writing Books

Les Edgerton’s Hooked

Posted on by beckylevine

Back in October, I talked about The Writer’s Journey, by Christopher Vogler. In that post, I mentioned Les Edgerton’s book Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One & Never Lets Them Go. I said I’d talk more about Edgerton’s book in another post.

So here we are.

With November and NaNoWriMo ending, and the new year heading our way fast, I thought this would be a good time to pick up this thread. Revision is, in a big part, about structure–about what happens when and which scenes go where. Edgerton’s book is solely and completely about the beginnings of a story, but (pardon the pun) that seems as good a place as any to start.

Edgerton talks about a lot of the same things Vogler does—at least in terms of the early part of the hero’s journey. Edgerton may not call everything by the same names, but in his chapters, you’ll find the ordinary world, the inciting incident, the threshold, etc. The big difference, though, between the two books is Edgerton’s emphasis on how quickly we, as writers, have to get those starting points onto the page.

I write fiction for kids–middle-grade and YA readers. These readers are not known for their patience with authors. You can blame it on action movies and video games, or you can credit these kids with the sense and intelligence to recognize and appreciate a tight, fast-moving opener. As someone who, in the past ten years went from reading (and loving) 700-page Victorian novels to devouring 250-page tense and terse, funny and furious YA books—I can say the decade has been a good education in writing.

Because it’s not just kids’ books that move more quickly today; it’s all books. At first, when you realize just how much Edgerton is asking you to do in the first chapter, first scene, first page, first paragraph, it’s intimidating. And part of your brain may go into the “I don’t have to” whine. But keep reading. And go back to the books you’ve lost most in the past couple of years. You’ll see that he’s right.

It’s not just that we’re told over and over that agents, if we’re lucky, read the first five pages. It’s not just that we know most book buyers skim the first page, maybe the last, then make their decision about whether to buy that book or leave it on the shelf where they found it. It’s that, these days, a good story sucks us in from Page 1, hooks us, and goes racing along so quickly that we have to grab on and ride, just to keep up.

This is the kind of story I want to be writing.

Thankfully, Edgerton doesn’t just point out the necessity of this kind of beginning. He gives thorough, detailed information about the big pieces of this skinny little beginning, and he follows up with seriously helpful (and funny) instructions for how to put those pieces together.

If you haven’t read Hooked, take a look. Especially, if you’re looking at a revision, post-NaNo or not, take a look. I think you’ll be glad.

And don’t forget to check out Martha Alderson’s blog, Plot Whisperer for Writers and Readers, all through the month of December, for tips on plotting out your revision. Martha will be guest-blogging here, too, soon!